The First Monday of the New Year is Time to...

Many have celebrated with gusto, some have looked back with and wished they'd... others spent time remembering when. But whether the New Year was meet with joy or made us think about things that weren't 2015 is here, which can make this Monday a watershed moment or a day we dread since loved ones, our job, abilities, situations changed. Perhaps things we hadn't anticipated or planned for were thrust upon us that made us feel we didn't measure up.

Yet when I read Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future,” I discover two things that sustain me. First, the very God who created me and knows the number of hairs on my head as well as my comings and goings knows my shortcomings and has done for me what I did not. Second, by trusting Him, I do not need to fear for if anyone should have been fearful of what he was facing it would have been Messiah (Christ).

However, that is not the picture of God's Suffering Servant that we see. Though in Mathew 26:39, Jesus prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.’ In the next breath  he uttered, “Yet not as I will, but as you will,” for he knew he had come into the world to do all that was prophesied about him so we could look upon this Monday and every other day of the week as a day of opportunity.

For having been ransomed as prophesied, we now own the reality of Romans 8:2, which says, “…because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death,” we are truly free indeed! So choose to walk today and every day in Messiah's footsteps and yours will be a life that looks backward with joy and forward with expectation in what the Lord will do to you and through you!

When you look back on this year the first Monday of 2016, I hope you see it as a year filled with the Fruit of the Spirit, so like that heart filled tree posted above, you know all you did was done with Gods eternal love.